


secret home i've made and found

by profiterolling



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profiterolling/pseuds/profiterolling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn and Harry run away to Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	secret home i've made and found

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://etornal.tumblr.com/post/55648966979/untitled-by-nivu-san-on-flickr) utterly devastating and charming photo. This started out as a drabble on tumblr but then ended up taking over my brain and bam, just over 1600 words of schmoopy self-indulgent fic.
> 
> Title from Skin by Zola Jesus. 
> 
> For vicepresidents, long may she prosper, the luscious minx.

You don't mean to run away to Paris.

You know how it goes— one drink turns to two drinks turn to ten drinks turns to stumbling into the train station sometime before midnight and having just enough money on your credit card to cover two Eurostar tickets. The two of you fall asleep in London— curled into each other like commas despite the arm rest in between— and wake up in Paris, just before midnight. It's a bit like a miracle. 

Both of you are wide awake after sleeping on the train, the kind of wide awake that make lights burn bright behind your eyelids after you blink and leave echoes in your ears. The two of you hold hands and wander from the train station, following the laughter and the lights to another bar, where you lick salt from each other's wrists and lips and bite into slices of lime, letting them explode tartly on your tongues.

In line for the bathroom, you confess to a girl with piercings rimming her ear that you came to Paris on a whim, without knowing anyone and without anywhere to stay. She looks at you shrewdly, as you point him out to her— _the one with curly hair, birds over his collarbones._ You're not telling her this to elicit any kind of emotion— the tequila has loosened your tongue and made you less wary of strangers, more open to confidences exchanged over shots and in the smog of cigarette smoke. She says something to you, but it's lost in the bass beat booming through your boots. She slips something into your pocket, but it isn't until the bar closes and you have him tucked into your side, warm and sweaty and singing under his breath, that you find the folded piece of paper, address smeary and almost illegible, the key tucked inside. 

It is almost too good to be true, and if you were less inebriated you would distrust it, like a precocious child in a fairy story, but when he eases the wadded up piece of paper from your fingers, he whoops and you can't not stumble down the rues and avenues until you find it, tucked into a sidestreet in the 10th arrondisement like a jewel in a thief's pocket. The lift is old and creaky, and when you slide the gate shut he yanks you in by your belt loops and kisses you, mouth sliding slick and greedy over yours. He tastes like salt and sunshine, and it is as impossible to tear yourself from him now than it was the day you met. 

You fumble for the light switch when you get the door open, the hall light weak and stuttering over the small space. The bed is right up against what seems to be the bathroom, no barrier at all in between. "Good thing we've already walked on each other shitting, eh?" he jokes, sliding a hot palm into the back of your jeans. You snort, but opening your mouth to retort but instead you yawn. You are achingly tired all of a sudden, the walk and the trip finally taking a toll on you. 

"Come to bed," you say, reaching for the hand palming your arse, turning his amorous gesture innocent as you clasp his fingers in yours. You waggle your eyebrows at him. "You can blow me in the morning." 

He laughs, but it's cut halfway through when he yawns, huge and leonine, into your ear. "Fine," he says. "First one up gets a blowjob and breakfast." 

It doesn't seem like the bed'll be big enough. Both of you toss and turn, until you suddenly fall blissfully, mercifully, into sleep. You wake up the next day because of a sunbeam right in your eyes, making it almost painful to open them. You get up to shut the curtains, disentangling yourself with difficulty from his octopus embrace, his gangly limbs refusing to surrender you. Once you're vertical, you can't imagine going back to sleep, even as he turns, still asleep, and leaves the most inviting space open beside him. 

You take the world's quietest piss, one eye on him the entire time, cataloging every small shiver and stir like you'll never get enough. Your stomach grumbles as you zip your jeans up, and you flip over the slip of paper with the address to write a quick note— _ran out for coffee and croissants Z x_. You prop it up with a chipped mug from one of the cupboards, on a table so small and rickety that you can imagine yourself knocking your knees into his, clumsily, like an adolescent approximation of footsie.

There's a boulangerie not ten feet from the front door of the building, the aroma of warm, fresh baked bread curling invitingly through the morning mist. You follow it almost on auto-pilot, your shoes making loud, decisive sounds on the pavement. 

You can string together maybe ten words in French, but the baker seems to realize that you're not from the neighborhood, because she lets you dawdle over the pastries, and after you pay she smiles at you and slips another two pains aux chocolat into the bag. You cradle the warm bag of pastries in one arm and hold the glass bottle of cold French milk with the other. 

The sunlight's brighter when you make your way back, the square beginning to fill with people— workers mostly, a few parents with children, their schoolbags slung over narrow shoulders. There's a small girl with a bookbag almost as big as her walking hand in hand with her dad, the two of them with the same riotous explosion of brown curls. She turns to smile at you as they pass, gap-toothed and brilliant, and you wink back, making her giggle. The floaty, soap bubble feeling of her laugh stays with you.

You expect him to be up when you get back, stumbling sleepily to his feet when he hears your key turn. Instead, you find him still asleep, almost falling off the bed, if not for his feet braced precariously on the metalwork in the window. His arms are over his head like he's on a roller coaster on the way down, or as if he's surrendering. His face is serene, and he's content as a cat stretched out in a sunbeam, his shirt rucking up slightly so you can see the bony protrusions of his hipbones, the bruise you left there with your mouth not two nights before. 

You place the bread and milk on the table carefully. He stirs slightly when you kiss his forehead, both his cheeks, the bow of his lips. You feel his smile underneath yours as he stirs into wakefulness, his body turning towards you.

"Hi," he says, his voice even deeper than usual, gravelly from sleep. "Good morning."

His greeting strikes a chord within you, and for a moment it's like it holds echoes of every time he's ever said that to you, from the first time the two of you accidentally fell asleep together after fucking, to the first time he slept over at your new place, to that time that you two bunked together at his mum's house before you ever told her the two of you were together. You want to hear that voice saying those two words to you, every morning for the rest of your life. You want it so much that your hands shake with it sometimes, that greedy wanting eating up your heart. You want him more than anything you've ever known in your short, bright life.

His eyes are still hooded with sleep but he's smiling, knowingly, a little like he did the first time you ever pushed him up against a wall and kissed him, the first time he sank to his knees in front of you, mouthing over the front of your jeans like the filthiest of promises. 

"Good morning," you say, drawing the o sound out, sing-song. "It's time to get up." 

He laughs and lets you pull him to his feet. 

"Did you set an alarm so you could get up early and go get breakfast?" he says, eyes widening at the feast you pull from the paperbag, the sunlight making the sugar on the pastry glisten. He raises his eyebrows at you, because normally you'd be immovable as a corpse until midday if left alone.

"I was up early," you say, shrugging. "And I was hungry." 

He tears into his bread, ravenous. "You know you've got me," he says, three bites in. "You don't have to bribe me with your fancy French pastries for me to blow you." You can hear the ring of sincerity underneath the lightness of his tone.

You roll your eyes. "'Course I know that," you say, kicking his feet and almost making him drop his bread. He glares at you accusingly, so you do it again, leaving your toes curled against the back of his ankle. 

He's got a smear of chocolate on his nose and a bit of sleep in the corner of his eye. There's a mark on his cheek from sleeping on a crease in the bed spread, and his hair is almost twice its usual size. You can't imagine eating breakfast in Paris with anyone else, or even wanting to be in Paris with anyone else but him. You've always thought of Paris as just another city, and prone to all the excesses and excitements of all big cities, but looking at him in the light slanting through the window, at his stupid hair and his lovely smile, you think maybe, _maybe,_ all those daft romantic people had the right idea.


End file.
